New Wineskins to consider proposal seeking dismissal from PCUSA presbyteries
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, July 20, 2006
TULSA — The voting delegates to the second annual New Wineskins Convocation will decide this week whether to begin steps toward withdrawing their member congregations from the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Specifically, they will vote on a proposal to appoint a strategy team whose duties will “include but not be limited to dismissal of congregations from their presbyteries. It will also include an examination of Biblical, spiritual, missional, congregational and legal considerations.”
If the proposal is approved, the strategy team will present its report to the delegates at the 2007 convocation.
The dismissal proposal was introduced Wednesday night by Dean Weaver, pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church and co-moderator of the New Wineskins Initiative, as part of an “action plan” that also calls for the evangelical group to become formally organized as the New Wineskins Association of Churches.
Although first organized as a parallel evangelical movement within the Presbyterian Church (USA), the New Wineskins Initiative has made almost no reference to being denominational or Presbyterian. Weaver emphasized that distinction during his presentation of the action plan, although it did include a reference to a connectionalism “as understood by the historic Reformed tradition.”
“Why are we here?” he asked. “God is doing a new thing, something we desperately want to be a part of. This is a post-denominational age; a paradigm shift is taking place. As we said in our press release after the General Assembly, everything has changed.”
The action plan has five steps, including the dismissal proposal and the formal organization of the New Wineskins Association. The others are:
- 1. Calling for a congress of renewal leaders this year to “pursue common ground towards a preferred future.” Three other organizations — the Global Presbyterian Fellowship, the Presbyterian Coalition and Constitutional Presbyterians, who seek to be allied with the 1,300 congregations in the Confessing Church Movement — will meet in August and September to consider their responses to the actions of the 2006 General Assembly. Of the three, only the Global Presbyterian Fellowship has asserted its intention to remain in the denomination.
- 2. Focusing on networks and fostering relationships “with common cause partners.”
- 3. Meeting in the winter of 2007 “to receive and act upon the recommendation of the strategy team.”
The proposal calls for a nine-member strategy team to be selected from nominations by voting delegates. The New Wineskins leaders will select the team from those nominations.
In the meantime, the New Wineskins leaders called on New Wineskins-endorsing congregations to begin asking questions similar to those raised by the San Diego Presbytery before the General Assembly. They include:
- a. Do the changes approved by the 2006 General Assembly create a constitutional crisis?
- b. Do the changes create a state of Biblical and confessional defection?
- c. Have the changes damaged or compromised the PCUSA’s ability to exercise governance over lower governing bodies?
- d. Has the covenant that binds our congregations and presbyteries together been breached?
- e. Have the changes minimized or eliminated our covenantal obligation to abide by the polity and discipline of higher governing bodies?
- f. What will be the future relationship between this session and the PCUSA?
- g. What future steps will our session take to address our concerns within the PCUSA?
They also asked the congregations to intentionally support ministries that reflect “our faith and missional priorities;” take steps to protect church property “for proper use in serving Jesus Christ and his Great Commission;” and “meet with other Presbyterians, including Constitutional Presbyterians, the Presbyterian Coalition and the Presbyterian Global Fellowship in order to speak to and hear proposals for ways forward together.”
“Everything has changed in the PCUSA,” Weaver declared, predicting that membership losses of more than 40,000 per year will “not only continue but will grow.”
“Congregations have been found in a paradox,” he added. “On the one hand, they have been finding innovative ways of being the church. At the same time, there is tension within the old wineskin that the covenant has been broken.”
“We come in that context, in the context of God doing amazing new things. ‘Going to Tulsa’ has been associated with enough is enough, and we are going to take action. The first order of business is to worship God and enjoy him forever.”
Worship, Weaver added, ensures that “our eyes are not on our problems, our eyes are not on the crisis, but our eyes are on the cross.”
He urged the convocation’s participants to “have ministry networks that are formed and functioning by the time we leave here. … We want to begin to practice living it out right now.”
“Finally,” he said, “we want this time not to be more talk. We want this time to be a time when we would not only hear and see God, but we would live it out and be God’s people, and we would go forward in faith together.”
“We are here because everything has changed, but God has not changed,” he said. “We’re called to be the church, but the church is not the denomination. We’re here because we’re called to be together.”